


Kitchen Dancing

by Ntjnke



Category: The Colbert Report, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Genre: Don't read this if RPF squicks you, M/M, RPF is still FICTION, This is RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2014-07-27
Packaged: 2018-02-10 15:23:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2030139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ntjnke/pseuds/Ntjnke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dancing is usually about a lot more than dancing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kitchen Dancing

**Author's Note:**

> This is a scene from a mega-fic that eventually refused to fit with everything else, so I edited it to stand alone. I felt it was a shame to round bin it. Lots of [this](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRb1-SAAIzs) and [this](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-FQL-tJ3ic) playing while I wrote.

**Disclaimer:** All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.

 

 

_Kitchen Dancing_

 

If you had asked me, a decade ago, I'd have said that the only dance Jon knew was a slow sway from one side to the other. A generic sway appropriate to any song. Something that required little effort and provided few opportunities for embarrassment.

Even a few years ago, I would have said that while he may not like dancing, he pours everything he can into what he actually can do. His rhythm is bad, but he's learned to combine the warmest hug in the world with the comfort of music. Swaying with Jon is a shelter from the rest of existence. It's the way he holds Tracey when they dance at a party and the way he rocks Maggie to bed.

But tonight, I guess this dance was for me.

The kids were in bed, and the girls were upstairs, sleepy already, getting ready for bed.

I hadn't expected this. This slow confident movement of his feet across the linoleum, and the way he was comfortable enough with the steps to just rest his head against my chest, to move with me and let us both exhale to sound of the music over the radio. The world felt like bubbles and champagne and fireworks, and Jon and I moved in small comfortable circles around my kitchen, him in his gold-toe socks and me in sandals.

In stocking feet, Jon only comes up to my chin. With his shoes, he makes it to my lips.

There's no special reason for us to dance, and when the music pauses a bit too long, we both get silly smirks on our faces because we know the cliché we're playing out. But it's nice. Jon feels nice. Warm, and when my hands slips around his waist, it's just the right height. When he leans in, it's just perfect and I rest my chin on his hair.

Me and Jon in the kitchen, responsible for the dishes, and being far more domestic than anyone would credit either of us for being.

Whenever it's just us, I find a way to migrate across the room, using chores or conversation as an excuse to eventually wrap my arms around him. And he knows it. Which is probably why tonight he smiled as we watched Tracey turn the corner at the top of the stairs, and then reached backward for my hand before turning toward the kitchen. But instead of reaching for the sink, he reached for the small clock radio Evie keeps in the window, tuning it to an oldies channel before stepping closer. My present. Jon going straight to my favorite part of the night. He rested the hand he'd grabbed on the small of his back and smiled up at me before placing a hand on the side of my jaw.

A small, intimate gesture that started a stream of intimate memories. Knowledge as precious as the moment Jon was building.

For instance, Jon sleeps naked.

If he doesn't have to fear a morning rush from a hyper four year old, Jon sleeps sprawled out on his stomach, completely naked, clutching the largest, softest pillow on the bed. He's always cold and I've spent many a morning tugging the comforter from his hands, forcing him to uncurl enough to swing his legs over the side of the mattress. Evie always puts an extra blanket on the bed when he sleeps over. And then she hides her body pillow from him.

Every morning, Jon blindly grabs his towel and mechanically put one foot in front of the other. Off to battle soap and water.

And then he starts to talk. About what my schedule is like, if the kids are awake, the errand we need to run for Tracey and if there was anything I'd like to do that day. By the time his shirt is on, he's started a constant monologue, and it's comforting. I don't think he even realizes it, but its almost his warm-up for the day because the longer he's talking, the more jokes he starts to slip in, until by the time he's reaching for his socks you're smiling and happy to be awake and overjoyed that Jon's there to be awake with you. It a warm, buzzing happy feeling that starts in your gut and leaves through your smile.

And now he doesn't even have to speak. He just need to smile.

Maybe that's why this year, I finally got a dance.

Tonight I found out, that if we're alone, Jon likes to be held with one hand around his waist, down low on the small of his back. When he dances, he moves close enough that there isn't a sliver of light between our bodies, and constantly moves his hands from my shoulders to the loops of belt and back up again.

That close, I can't help but breathe deeply and enjoy the way Jon smells. It's always the same. A mix of Dove, Jergens, and Downy. If you mention it, he'll blush and run his hand through his hair, saying that he has to shower to wake up and that he can't fall asleep covered in New York. That the brand loyalty is his Mom's fault. But if you tease him at the just right moment, he'll break, laugh, and give into a hug. Then you can run your hands through his hair, usually still damp from the shower, and watch the curls slowly wrap around your fingers as it dries.

He doesn't like that it went gray so early. That it's thinning at the back and that Makeup told his barber to cut it long on top so they can cover it up. He worries that in ten years he'll have a comb over.

The most sensitive part of his body is the nape of his neck, where the whorl of still dark hair meets pale skin. A quick stroke down the back of his neck causes him to huff softly and press closer, his head tucked into my collar.

Holding him is hedonistic. I'm still embarrassed how long it took me to recognize that it starts with his clothes. His ubiquitous, gray t-shirt.

Most of his shirts are at least a decade old, and while he must have bought them when he was much slimmer, they still hang off his shoulders, far too big, reaching almost to mid-thigh. Always so soft. Jon always buys an x-large, even though he only needs a medium. Thick cotton, something he can't see through, with no tag in the back and no logo in the front. I've seen him buy new t-shirts, and he puts as much thought into them as Evie puts into a new dress, except he doesn't care so much about how it will look as how it will feel. It can't be too scratchy and it can't seem like the type of shirt that will take fifty washes to get comfortable. It has to be soft the day he buys it.

It's actually the easiest way to recognize him in a picture, so much so that I think his early headshots don't look like him not because the face is so different, but because the wardrobe is.

I asked him once, about his shirts, why they were always too big, and he'd smirked and blown me off. It took me being two weeks from my own hosting gig and a crash diet for him to pull me close one night and tell me that I shouldn't care what I wear, how I looked. He love me however I looked and whatever I wore.

It was an obvious sidestep and not what I need to hear. We were naked, but I socked him the stomach to prove it.

What I found out was that Jon doesn’t like his chest. It's not an age thing or a weight thing. He doesn't like the way his shoulders never filled out as much as his chest, the way the weight distributes oddly, leaving him feeling like he should be wearing an undershirt. Big shirts cover all of that and they're comfortable. "If you're going to wear something all day you should be comfortable."

That night I'd kissed his chest, right in the center, and told him that I liked said hairy chest very much. He'd ruffled my hair, called me silly, but he also pulled me closer as we fell asleep.

Evie smiles now when she sees Jon's t-shirts. She bought him a pack of gray ones last year when they went on sale at American apparel. She can spot when he's wearing one of "hers" a mile away, and she'll tell him so.

Jon says he wears his clothes because they are comfortable, but I sometimes wonder who the comfort is for. Nate used to wrap his fist around the sleeve of Jon's t-shirt and fall asleep with his cheek pressed to the down-soft cotton of his father's shirt. I've seen Maggie do the same.

Standing there, holding him, I run my hands in a familiar pattern down his sides, and recognize the shiver that raced from my palms up my arms. Three times too big, faded, and I love this damn shirt more than I can comprehend.

Tonight, I learned that if Jon really wants to dance, he also doesn't mind an occasional turn. The kind that turns him under my arm in a full circle. One that's just quick enough to spin him back towards me in order to keep him balanced. The first time he did it, I laughed out loud, my eyes wide with shock and glee. But from then on I caught him with as much grace and security as I did Evie. Corrected him whenever a turn went a little fast. Cheated and pulled him close at the end of a turn. Laughed when he caught on, and made sure not to crush his feet with my sandals. That he should have kept his boots on.

Our first morning together, I quipped that his boots were throwing off my aim. In socks I could just turn my head and kiss on his hairline but his boots moved my lips to his cheek. It made my kissing practice inconvenient.

What I've learned in the years since is that he loves me and I love him, but we're both still guys, and as such, there are still some boundaries. Some things that pinch a little too sharply at our pride, and for Jon, it's his height. That morning, I didn't get a laugh for my joke. He just shrugged on his jacket and grabbed his keys from the little bowl he and Tracey keep by the front door. He kissed me goodbye, but didn't smile.

But then I was new to Jon and I'd moved too quickly into the too personal.

Jon knows damn well how little he is. I've been through several renovations of his set, and seen the way his lips press together as conversation after conversation revolved around designs for lifts or platforms for his chair. Jon get's dressed in the green room and always tucks his boots under the right corner of his office desk. Safe, a security blanket that he tucks away for an hour during taping, to be retrieved when he can be comfortable again in his clothes. Just himself.

It's been over ten years, and now he knows that I love him, and it's just something that's slipped into the unimportant. For me, it's more important that I'm one of a handful of people who've seen every inch of him bare, physical and emotional, and that Jon Stewart trusts me enough to dance slightly off rhythm to an old Otis Redding song.

Jon snuggled closer as the song changed, and I held him tighter than just dancing called for. Ran my hand through the hair at the back of his head and kissed his ear. And since Jon loves touch more than he'll ever admit, he just kissed the cotton of my shirt in response. He let his hands slide from my back to loops of my belt.

"Jon?"

A soft murmur is the only response I get.

"You know this is gonna make me kick your shoes."

He laughs and shakes his head against my shirt.

When we're working on a piece or just hanging out, I occasionally kick his shoes and smile, and _he_ smiles because he gets it.

I want his shoes off, and he knows why, and it's a good thing between us.

As Jon's breath slows against my chest, I decide we deserve one more song.


End file.
